Used Broadly, Mischief
by bisexualcharliedavis
Summary: Whumptober day 21: fist fight. teenage!Charlie gets into a fight at school, much to the displeasure of his parental guardian, Lucien Blake.


_A/N: Another au, this time a modern au with teenage!Charlie and his foster dad, Blake. I don't write a lot of modern aus. Maybe i should? Let me know what you think of this one, if I should put it in the maybe expand pile or not. I high key love teenage!Charlie lol. warnings: minor blood, minor parental neglect, explicitly father/son relationship with Blake and Charlie. _

"What am I going to do with you?" The Doc demanded, carefully cleaning Charlie's bloody knuckles with a q-tip coated in antiseptic. Underneath the bag of frozen peas, he cringed. He was pretty convinced people on television were liars because this probably hurt more than when he'd broken the skin.

"Uh...Let me off with no punishment?" He asked, hopefully. His old man looked up at him, his eyebrows drawn and his face stormy.

"No punishment." He said, "You would need a very, very good story to convince me of that."

Well, Charlie had a good story. Now it was just a matter of convincing the Doc that he was in the right this whole time.

"Would you believe he deserved it?" He asked, and took the peas off his nose, the cold was starting to burn his skin.

"Put that back." Lucien ordered, "You've got visitation with your mother on the weekend and I don't want her thinking I beat you." He rolled his eyes at that, it was a ridiculous thought; if only because Charlie has been Blake's foster kid since he was twelve, and if he was going to beat him he probably would have done so already. Even so, he wasn't quite game enough to annoy him more so he put the peas back on his nose. Damn Tyneman managed to get one good punch in, right in the middle of his face.

"If you were gonna beat me you probably would have done it when me 'n Danny accidentally put that hole in the wall with the Wii remote."

"Danny and I." Lucien reminded him, "And I did tell you two wear the wrist straps." Charlie cringed at the antiseptic touched a particularly raw piece of skin, it'd been too long since he last got into a proper fight. He was getting weak, he thought, annoyed. Back when he was living with his mother, he used to get into all kinds of fights amongst the boys at his school. "I'm still waiting on that explanation."

Charlie sighed and rolled his shoulders before starting. Some of his spine popped, and the noise made him cringe.

"I was in the quad, with Danny and Rose -"

"The way most of the time you get into trouble usually begins." Well, he wasn't wrong. Charlie rarely got into any of this sort of mischief before he started hanging out with Danny, and the two of them got into about half as much trouble before Lawson's niece came to town and they were forced to invite her places.

That was mean. They'd only been forced once or twice before they realized she was actually cool and invited her to hang out because they liked her.

"I was in the quad, with Danny and Rose, just you know. Eating lunch and stuff." They favoured a spot up against the wall by the English rooms, the three of them usually had a packed lunch, so they rarely ventured out to the tuck shop, unless it was particularly hot and someone had money for icecream. They usually tried to line up the one or two days a term that their respective guardians let them have tuckshop with each other, and then tried to line that up with having tuckshop duty in class so they could get out ten minutes early together.

"Mmmm."

"Well, Danny had to return a book to the library or he'd get into trouble with Jean. So we were walking towards the library, and we passed Edward and his group of dumbasses."

"Language."

"Edward and his loser friends." He corrected, "And one of them started being an Ass to Rose for hanging out with dudes."

"And that was why you decided to beat that boy up?"

"No. I decided to beat him up because he called Danny a mistake and said that I lived with you because my mother is a whore."

"I don't believe that for a second." The Doc said, "Tell me what happened, or you can expect to be banned from playing on your Playstation for a long while."

"Okay, but he really was being a dickhead to Rose, though." Charlie said, "And he called her a whore, and suggested that she's you know. Having sex with both of us."

"And that was why you got into the fight."

"Yeah." Blake put the pink stained cotton swab to the side and began wrapping Charlie's hand with a long, white strip of gauze.

"Why?" Why indeed. He didn't know why. Just felt a wave of overwhelming anger was over him when someone took it upon themselves to insult his friends.

"I yelled back he was a moron and he challenged me to fight."

"So, you rose to the bait." He deflated on his seat, he hadn't really thought about it like that.

"Guess so." The Doc sat back and looked at him. His eyes were still stormy, and his lips were pulled into a tight line.

"I'm proud of you for standing up for your friends." He said, "But I'm not happy you did it with violence."

"Maybe it just runs in my blood." He said, flexing his knuckles, and watching blots of pink on the gauze.

"I don't think it does. I think that you just made one bad choice. It's not the end of the world." Lucien said, "But you can't be getting into fights. It's not good for your health, for one. But it's also not great for your future."

"You think they'll take me away?" He asked, sitting up straighter. It'd been at least a few years since he had any fear of being forced to leave the house here on Mycroft Avenue.

"No, I don't think so." He said, "But if that other boy presses charges, it'll be in other hands."

He hadn't thought about that either.

He loved living here, with the Doc. He had a hundred different names for him, The Doc, Lucien, Dad, My Old Man, Doctor Blake, or even just Blake. He had his own room, with a locking door, and there was never any shortage of food. Most importantly, there was no Bernie. He'd been angry at first about having to leave; after all. Bernie was the problem, not him. Everything had been fine before he showed up and getting into Charlie's space. Getting his youngest brother to call him Dad because he was too young to know better. Harassing Charlie about not being a police officer. Dragging his mother through each of his get rich quick schemes. Getting his little brother into boxing, turning him against him. He missed his mother, and called her every night. He did not miss the screaming fights, the door slamming, explosive fights. He most certainly did NOT miss running away for days at a time just to get away from him.

The idea of living with a new family, of leaving the life he'd set up for himself in Ballarat, of leaving Danny and Rose? Of leaving the school where he had established himself? Of leaving the Doc? That scared him.

"You'll make sure he doesn't, right?" He asked before he can stop himself.

"I'll do my very best, but at the least you're going to have to write an apology letter." Lucien warned him, "And grounded for a month, banned from any video game for the same time." Pause, "And I'm revoking this terms tuckshop."

As much as he loathed the punishment...It could be a lot worse. He could live with that.

"Now get going on that apology letter."

He slid off the table, and after a second hugged him.

"Love ya, Dad." He said, impulsively.

"I love you too, Charlie." He assured him, "When you're not putting holes in the walls with errant Wii Remotes." He can't help but laugh.


End file.
